Stat Monitor Repairman said:
AgLA06 said:
Reality is probably closer to not preventing infection with Omicron, but lessoning severity, hospitalization and death.
Problem here is at what risk of known side effects?
Yeah it might lessen risk of severity, but it also seems like it may be more risk than its worth at the end of the day.
Here is the thing I don't get about this argument - if you believe the vaccine wasn't evaluated long enough and could have significant side effects, whether short or long term, then you also have to believe that contracting the virus has the same unknown side effects.
Vaccines have been around a long time. Our understanding of how they work and what side effects they may cause is as good as our understanding of the human immune system. Because it's not really a specific vaccine that causes the side effects - it's the body's immune response to it.
And our understanding of immune responses is just like every other health condition or health treatment - we have data that represents a large section of the population but there are ALWAYS outliers.
Just like a Covid infection causes variable symptoms in infected people, the vaccine (and other viruses, for that matter) also causes variable reactions.
Viruses, not just Covid, are complicated vectors for infection that can cause all sorts of other problems in the human body. It's known that viral infections can cause heart inflammation (the flu), cancer (HPV), liver disease, and diabetes. A recent study just suggested that Epstein Barr virus (a form of herpes that lies dormant in the body after infection) causes MS in some people.
One might argue that some of these conditions aren't always a direct result of the virus itself, but an indirect consequence of the body's response to the virus. When your immune system is weakened, it can affect all sorts of other things.
There is nothing inherently unsafe about the use of mRNA vaccine. The mechanism for protein formation via the mRNA vaccine is the same as the mechanism that would occur if you were infected with the virus. The vaccine is just a much lower, controlled dose.
If you have a bad response to the vaccine, that's a function of your immune system. And it stands to reason that you would have an even worse reaction of you were to contract the virus.
But you can't logically argue that the vaccine has the risk of long-term side effects and not conclude the same for the virus.